Karla Mosley looks back at Maya's most vulnerable moment.
Soaps have done paternity switches all the time. The Bold and the Beautiful, however, didn’t opt to take Maya, played by Karla Mosley, and Nicole, played by Reign Edwards, down a traditional mother/daughter surprise path. Instead, the show used their familial dynamic to tell a tale that has only become more relevant since it began to play out in 2015.
To say that Nicole was surprised when she came to Los Angeles and reconnected with her sibling would be an understatement. After being around for a bit, Maya and Nicole had a showdown in the landmark Forrester mansion living room. Clearly, there was some long-running conflict between them, and it was time for the secrets to come out. “I am not the enemy here,” Nicole told her older sister.
The younger Avant expressed her frustration that no one in the family, including her mother and father, was being truthful about Maya’s absence. While Nicole, as a young girl, had limited interaction with Maya, she couldn’t figure out what the estrangement between their parents and Maya was all about. But that was the point. Nicole informed Maya she wasn’t her sister at all. “You’re Myron,” Nicole stated. “You’re my brother.”
And with that well-kept secret (kudos to the show’s publicity team for keeping it under wraps) now exposed, viewers knew B&B was embarking on a different kind of story. As the drama continued, Maya and Nicole’s parents, Julius (Obba Babatundé) and Vivienne Avant (Anna Maria Horsford), came to town. Maya’s romance with Rick (Jacob Young) was put in jeopardy, but in the end (or at least for a while), love won. Rick realized he loved Maya, and who she was before didn’t matter. Love mattered.
“The crew didn’t even know until that day,” Mosley tells Soap Hub about the dramatic reveal. “The other actors [not in the storyline] didn’t know. It was wild. The reveal was so well protected and held with care, especially because of the subject matter. We didn’t want to just do anything flashy. We wanted it to mean something. It was fun. It was exciting.”
Everyone had more questions than answers after the reveal. “‘What’s going to happen?’ and ‘What are people going to think?'” Mosley says. “There was an element of surprise across the board.” Mosley believes that Maya’s tale was both ahead of its time and timely as Caitlin Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner) was in the news, announcing her transition. “It was almost simultaneous,” Mosley recalls. “We didn’t plan it that way.”
Maya had been on the canvas since 2013 and was, at one point, searching for a long-lost child. However, that could have been a child Myron fathered for those wondering how her past tracked with her new storyline. “I remember talking to Lawrence [Saint-Victor, Carter]’s wife Shay at the [2014] B&B holiday party,” Mosley shares. “I was telling her how much I love the show but that activism was so important to me. Then, in January, after I came back from break, Brad [Bell, head writer/executive producer] said to me, ‘This is what we’re thinking of doing.'”
The reveal was played in the show’s tag on Wednesday, March 18, but viewers had to wait till the following Monday to see how it started to play out as the show was pre-empted for March Madness basketball for the next two days. What adjustments, if any, did Mosley make to her portrayal of Maya upon finding out she’d been born male?
“I needed to make the story make sense in my mind,” she says. “It needed to make sense for me — especially as when she first came on, she was asking about where her baby was. Also, why was Maya going from this ‘good girl’ to [someone else]? If someone doesn’t have a true sense of who they are and they’re used to putting on a mask, they’re used to switching [behavior]. Trauma does that. There was a process of collecting the pieces in order to make a full picture.”
How did Mosley feel about Rick choosing Maya after learning everything? “I thought it was so well-handled and written so well,” she says. “We had a great time. It was an important story to tell. The feedback was staggering, and I hear it to this day. Every voice, every story, and every generation is important. That’s the work, and it’s also entertainment. We need to be able to both laugh and cry.”
Alas, Rick and Maya split off camera after they moved to Forrester International (that place is not known for a good marital track record). There’s always the chance Maya and/or Rick could return. In the meantime, Mosley is currently appearing in the play How It’s Gon’ Be, which is directed by Ahmed BesK (Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars fame). Performances are on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 4 p.m., and Mondays at 8 p.m. through Monday, October 23. Tickets are $34 on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. All Monday night performances are pay-what-you-want. The play will be at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90039. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to Echo Theater Company.
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